


The Case Of The Salad Monster

by The Sign of Tea (NoPlastic)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Gen, Multi, Possible Polyamory, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 19:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3781987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoPlastic/pseuds/The%20Sign%20of%20Tea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a monster under Anna Watson's bed. Sherlock Holmes investigates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Case Of The Salad Monster

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to faerymorstan for proofreading! Any remaining mistakes are my fault.

Mary stood in front of the bathroom mirror getting ready for her date night with her husband when little Anna came in, red-faced and crying.

“What’s wrong, love?”

Mary knelt down to be on eye level with her daughter. Anna sobbed, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Mummy, there’s a monster under my bed.”

“A monster,” Mary echoed. She turned to John, who was busy applying the aftershave that he thought was his wife’s favourite.

“Are you sure?” he asked carefully.

Anna nodded. Lovingly, Mary stroked through her hair. This was the first time that Anna mentioned anything about monsters, and it wasn’t typical for her at all. She wasn’t even scared of spiders. So obviously this behaviour had to do with the fact that John and Mary were going to leave the house without her tonight.

“Don’t worry,” Mary tried to reassure her cheerfully. “Sherlock will come and pick you up in ten minutes. He’s a detective, remember?”

Anna nodded again, now rather enthusiastically. She loved Sherlock.

“He’ll have a look at what’s under your bed. I’m totally sure there are no monsters, but Sherlock surely knows best.”

It worked—Anna stopped crying and wiped her eyes. John produced a tissue from somewhere and knelt down as well to dry his daughter’s face.

“And afterwards Sherlock will take you back to Baker Street with him,” Mary continued. “So you can have cocoa and biscuits with Mrs Hudson!”

A smile appeared on Anna’s face. Mary felt relieved. She’d been looking forward to the date night for so long, and she had worried for days that something might ruin it. But Sherlock would save the day. Everything would be fine.

\---

Golden light flooded out onto the doorstep as Mary opened the door for Sherlock. She’d prettied herself up for the evening: the classic little black dress, silver jewelry, subtle makeup, and some pearls in her hair. To Sherlock, she looked like a princess from a fairy tale, and he was careful not to hug her too tightly; he feared his roughness and the cold he brought in might destroy her fragile bit of happiness. The princess herself didn’t seem to care—she held onto him as if she wanted to squeeze the air out of his lungs. Mary never feared anything.

“I hope you’ll enjoy your visit to the theatre, dinner, and the following sex,” he said to her and John, who had appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. In contrast to his wife, John had no idea of how to dress himself properly. His shoes didn’t match his trousers at all, and he smelled like an entire perfume shop.

“So where’s Anna?”

“Currently on the sofa watching that kids’ show she likes,” John answered. “Please see that you get her away from the telly. She’s not supposed to sit in front of it all day. We just needed something to calm her down quickly.”

“Why?” Sherlock furrowed his brow. That Anna needed to be calmed down was a rare occurrence.

“She thinks there’s a monster under her bed,” Mary explained while she put on a cardigan and grabbed her handbag. “I’m not sure if it’s a new phase or if she just wanted to keep us from leaving her alone.”

“A monster.”

“Yes, perhaps you could do some _investigating,_ you know.” She winked at Sherlock. “If the Great Detective says there’s no monster under her bed, it’ll probably convince her more than anything John or I could do.”

Sherlock nodded conscientiously. Investigating. He hadn’t expected that his services would be needed tonight, since he’d got used to babysitting Anna as a welcome holiday from his routine. However, the prospect of _working_ together with her made the evening seem all the more interesting.

After Mary and John had left, Sherlock didn’t have to talk Anna out of watching telly at all. She switched it off as soon as he entered the room; she ran toward him and tugged on his coat until he knelt down and embraced her.

“Can we go to Baker Street now?” she asked impatiently.

“Soon,” Sherlock replied. “There’s some work to do first. Your mummy says you’re an eye witness of a supernatural event.”

He couldn’t help grinning at Anna’s confused face.

“I’m talking about the monster you said you saw in your room.”

Anna’s eyes widened.

“Yes!” the girl shouted. “I saw it. It was under my bed! It’s green and—and its eyes _glow!”_

“If that’s the case… well, then it’s a case. A case for me.” He gave her a cheerful smile. “As a detective it’s my job to investigate when there are mysteries, and this is definitely one.”

Anna’s expression became a very endearing mixture of excitement and tension.

“What if it’s evil?”

“Don’t worry.” Sherlock stood up, took Anna by the hand and led her towards the stairs to her room. “I’ve met monsters before. I know what to do.”

“Even ones with glowing eyes?”

“They all have glowing eyes.”

She giggled when he picked her up to carry her up the stairs.

“Don’t you have to go and get your hat first?”

“My _hat?_ What do you mean?”

“The Sherlock Holmes hat. Because it’s a detective hat. You can’t detective without the hat.”

“‘Detective’ is not a verb, Anna,” he murmured as he pushed the door to her room open and switched the light on. So far, everything was quiet in here. He scanned the brightly coloured walls and furniture, the wooden train set, the pink toy horses and white unicorns, the collection of fire engines and police cars that Anna liked to play “crime scene” with, the floral bedclothes.

No significant abnormalities.

“Can I put you down?” he asked. “I need to take a look at what’s under the bed.”

Sherlock crouched on the floor, magnifying glass and torch lamp in his hands. Next to him, Anna fidgeted nervously.

The space under the bed was darker than it should have been. There were a few fluffs, a thin layer of dust, and something resembling paw prints. Sherlock shoved his head a little deeper into the shadows, took a pair of tweezers from his pocket and picked up a small object.

“Ah,” he uttered when he came back up into the light with the piece of evidence.

“What is it?” Anna whispered.

“Unusual, but not unheard of.” The piece of evidence was a ball of green hairs—fur—interspersed with tiny green scales that shimmered in the lamplight.

“You were right, Anna. There is indeed a monster under your bed.”

Anna opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by a scratching noise from under the bed. A second later, a monster crawled into the light. It stood on four legs, had purple glowing eyes, and was about the size of a Cocker Spaniel. It had a tail and looked almost like a little dinosaur, but its body was mostly covered in green fur, with only a few scales around the neck, and a small yellow horn on its forehead.

“Hello,” it said. “My name is Fi. I’m a salad monster.”

With an alarmed squeal, Anna jumped and hid behind Sherlock when the creature moved toward her.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the monster. “I only eat salad.”

It sniffed the air, turned its head towards Sherlock, and squinted up at him.

“Are you Sherlock Holmes, the detective?”

“Yes. _Consulting_ detective.”

“Can you solve a crime for me?”

“Any time.”

Sherlock stuffed his equipment back in his pockets and rubbed his hands. Things were getting extraordinarily interesting. He’d never solved a crime for a monster before.

“What kind of crime is it?”

The monster sat down and lowered its head in a way that made it look very distressed.

“Murder.”

“Perfect!” Sherlock exclaimed. “Do you have any evidence, know any witnesses, or can you lead me to the crime scene?”

Fi lifted its head again and eyed him suspiciously. Then it answered, “I can lead you to the crime scene.”

Without any further explanations it stood up, turned around and disappeared under the bed.

“What do we do?” Anna asked while Sherlock was already busy folding his long limbs under the bed. “Can we really go where the monster went?”

He hesitated. In his own excitement, he’d forgotten that he had to look after Anna and couldn’t just leave her alone. His duty was also to keep her safe. He weighed the risk for a short while until he came to a decision that he thought was the most responsible compromise.

“We can, but if anything happens that could be dangerous, we’ll go back.”

It was only when he noticed the glint in Anna’s eyes that he realized he shouldn’t have said that— _could be dangerous._ Not to a child from this family. Anna, all fears seemingly forgotten, was under the bed and after the monster faster than Sherlock himself.

At first, there was only the dust-covered floor under Sherlock’s hands, and he hit his head on the wall when he tried to crawl forward, but then something _shifted,_ and a hole in the wall appeared. He pushed himself into it and felt his way through the dark. After a while, he saw light again and was able to stand up. He found himself in a narrow tunnel that smelled like a cave. It was illuminated faintly by a light he couldn’t see the source of.

Anna was already waiting for him. The monster sat next to her with an expression that Sherlock would have described as friendly. The purple glow of its eyes was even more intense in the half-dark.

“The crime happened over there,” it said and led Sherlock and Anna round a corner into another tunnel where they found a small creature very similar to Fi. It was not green and purple, however, but bright red with blue feet and a yellow belly. Its belly was visible because the monster was lying on its back with its legs in the air. It was very obviously dead.

“This is Fuff,” Fi explained. “Two days ago it went to sleep and never woke up again, although it was healthy and strong and only 782 years old. There can’t have been a natural cause for its death.”

Fi shook its head.

“Fuff was my friend,” it said and cried a single purple tear.

“What do you think caused its death then?” Sherlock asked. He was already kneeling on the tunnel floor next to Fuff’s corpse and studying it with his magnifying glass. No visible injuries, no signs of violence. Wordlessly he instructed Anna how and where to look for clues. The girl’s eyes followed his gestures with fascination.

“I think it was the nightmare demon,” Fi said. “He’s an evil creature who haunts dreams. Gives you nightmares in which you die, and then you really are dead. He feeds on souls. His victims always end up lying on their back, like Fuff here. Normally it used to sleep on its side.”

“The nightmare demon,” Sherlock muttered, mostly to himself. “I think I’ve heard of him before, but that was ages ago.”

Fi gave him a curious look.

“How many ages?”

Sherlock didn’t bother answering and instead flicked through the archives of his mind palace. For an indeterminable timespan, he was so deeply lost in thought that his surroundings disappeared and he only saw his memories—long rows and tables of data on one side, colourful images and ideas on the other. Eventually he shook his head.

“I can’t remember. Must have deleted it.”

He got back on his feet and reached into his pocket.

“I need to make a phone call.”

\---

Anna watched Sherlock enter a long, long number into his phone. Eventually he held it to his ear and waited. For a while nothing happened, and Anna couldn’t help fidgeting again. She had a feeling that Sherlock was nervous as well, although he tried to hide it. His free hand kept rummaging around in the coat pocket where he kept his cigarettes. Anna was about to remind him that he wasn’t allowed to smoke, when Sherlock suddenly straightened his back and a small smile appeared on his face. It seemed someone was answering the phone now.

“Yes, hello Victor, it’s me,” he said. “I’m in your dimension again… sorry, I had to come. No, don’t worry, I didn’t bring anything contaminated this time.”

There was a pause when Sherlock listened to what the person on the other end of the line had to say.

“Listen, Victor. We have a problem here… yes, _we._ That’s Anna Watson and me and a salad monster named Fi. We’re at a crime scene. The nightmare demon is going around hunting and killing monsters. Have you—.”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence because another man about as old as Sherlock appeared in front of him. Out of nowhere he suddenly stood in the middle of the tunnel. He was a little transparent—Anna could still see the tunnel wall through him, as if he was made of painted glass.

“Victor!” Sherlock greeted him. “Nice to see you again. Even as a ghost.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Victor said. “Despite the chaos you caused the last time you visited me.”

“Yes, sorry about that.”

Without another word, the ghost turned to the monster’s corpse and inspected it carefully. Anna was glad he didn’t look at her, even though he seemed friendly. She’d only heard bad things about ghosts.

“You’re right, Fi,” Victor said to the green monster. “This is definitely the work of the nightmare demon.”

“What can we do?” Fi asked and wagged its tail hectically. “Can we do anything at all?”

Victor seemed to think about this for a while.

“Perhaps we could summon him,” he said then. “But that’s risky. Would you be ready to fight him, Sherlock?”

“I don’t know,” the detective replied. “How do I fight him?”

“Well, I don’t know either.” Victor shrugged. “I’m not sure anyone ever tried before. The only thing I’m sure about is that he has a physical presence—in contrast to me, for example. So you would have to do it, Sherlock, I can’t. He’s said to be quite big and strong though. Maybe hand-to-hand combat… you’re good at boxing, aren’t you?”

“Bartitsu,” Sherlock corrected him. “Yes, I’m good at it. Now please tell me how we can summon that monster hunting demon, so we can get rid of him.”

Victor sighed and moved his fingers in the air as if he was holding an invisible phone.

“Wait… here, I found something.”

He kept scrolling with his index finger on a display that nobody else could see.

“It says you can either lie down and sleep next to his last victim and wait until you have a nightmare,” he said eventually. “Or you can say your name in front of a mirror three times.”

“Good.” The detective took on his thinking pose. “I’m not going to lie in this tunnel and try to sleep, so I’ll go for the other option. But how do we get a mirror? Does the display of my phone count, if I can see my reflection in it?”

“No, sorry. It has to be an actual mirror. Don’t you have a mirror app on your phone? I think that could work.”

“No, Victor, I’m not as vain as you. But I can download one, can’t I?”

“Here? On _your_ phone?” Victor’s eyebrows wiggled in the funniest way Anna had ever seen, and he shook his head. Anna giggled. Maybe this ghost wasn’t as bad as she’d thought, after all.

The two men and Fi stared at each other helplessly and seemed to have forgotten about Anna, until she had an idea.

“Will this do?” she asked. In her trouser pocket she’d found the tiny blue mirror that belonged to her Sleeping Beauty doll. “It’s so small I can only see my eye in it, but it’s a real mirror.”

Sherlock held out his hand and Anna gave him the toy. Between his finger and thumb it nearly disappeared. He held it up in front of his face, but he didn’t say anything. Instead he turned to Anna again.

“Go away,” he ordered. “I don’t want you anywhere near a demon. I don’t even want you to _see_ the demon. Go hide behind the corner back there.”

He pointed into the direction they had come from.

“Stay there until I tell you it’s safe again.”

Anna wanted to protest, but Sherlock’s face was very serious. She knew there was no point in arguing with him when he was making that face. So she walked back to the corner and sat down on the floor behind it.

_“My_ name?” she heard Sherlock ask.

“Yes,” Victor said. “Your own name. First, middle, and last.”

Even the monster giggled a little when the detective spoke his entire name—William Sherlock Scott Holmes—three times in a row.

At first nothing happened. Anna had stood up and peeked round the corner when the light started to fade. It got darker and darker, until she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face anymore. An icy wind blew through the tunnel.

In front of Sherlock, a pair of eyes appeared. They were white and huge. The detective switched his torch back on. The light revealed a formless black creature. It swirled and kept changing its shape like a shadow or like smoke, but it was definitely alive.

“Human,” the demon growled in a voice like sandpaper. His dark body changed its form again and developed arms—long, thin shadows with claws that stretched towards Sherlock.

“Oh no,” Fi squeaked anxiously. “He’s going to kill him!”

With bated breath Anna waited for the detective to do something. Sherlock didn’t move. He seemed frozen; his hands trembled at his sides.

“Hypnotising!” Victor exclaimed. “Shit! That power wasn’t on the list.”

Helplessly he called Sherlock’s name again and again. Fi chimed in.

“Sherlock! SHERLOCK!”

But Sherlock still stood there and didn’t move because he couldn’t.

“You’re food,” said the demon. “Human! Tasty! Good! Your soul will keep me alive for longer than anyone else lives!”

Anna couldn’t keep still any longer and ran back into the tunnel. She arrived at Sherlock’s side just when the demon touched his cheek. The claws seemed to sink into his skin. Sherlock, now finally able to move but unable to escape, doubled over and howled in pain.

“No!” Anna shouted and stormed towards the black creature. “You ugly thing, I won’t let you get Sherlock’s soul!”

She stumbled into the dark and clawed at the shadow. At first her hands remained empty, but then she got hold of something slippery and terribly cold. The demon screamed. He reared up, stretched and expanded in all directions.

“No,” he whined, but his voice was weak.

Cold turned into warmth under Anna’s hands. The light returned. Somebody coughed (Sherlock). The demon was gone.

 

“Little children,” Victor stated after he’d looked up the nightmare demon a second time on the Fifth Dimension net. “Under the age of ten. The ultimate weapon. They destroy the tissue the demon’s physical presence is made of and catapult him into a different dimension.”

He glanced up from his invisible display at Sherlock and Anna, who sat across from him with their backs against the tunnel wall.

“Congratulations, Anna. You did it.”

“Is he dead?” Anna asked.

She was surprised that she wasn’t frightened at all. The warmth that the demon had left behind warmed her from the inside as well. She knew he wouldn’t come back anytime soon. There would be no nightmares for a while.

“No, he’s not,” Victor said. “He’s just gone. I guess he goes hunting somewhere else now. Far away, I hope.”

“Couldn’t you have found out about this strategy earlier?” Sherlock wanted to know. “Instead of telling me I could fight that thing with my bare hands?”

He looked pale and more than a little angry. His left hand kneaded a packet of cigarettes that he kept staring at hungrily.

“Don’t worry,” Anna whispered and touched the detective’s arm. That seemed to calm him a little.

“The demon won’t come back.”

“I should’ve known not to trust Demonpedia,” Victor admitted.

_“Excuse me?”_ Now Sherlock sounded really upset. “You got all your information from one of those useless—.”

He was interrupted by a loud snoring noise. On the floor next to Victor, there was movement: Fuff, the dead salad monster, opened its eyes, glanced up at the small group of people staring at it, and wagged its tail.

“What….”

Fi did an excited jump and was by its friend’s side immediately. Fuff rolled over, got up, and shook itself.

“Looks like it has come back from the dead,” Victor remarked.

“Monsters do that sometimes,” he said with a side-eye at Sherlock.

Fi and Fuff meanwhile ran in circles around each other.

“You’re back! You’re back!” Fi said again and again. In response Fuff meowed and barked.

“Oh,” Victor uttered sympathetically. “It can’t speak? Perhaps it’s not fully recovered yet.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Fi assured him. “It just doesn’t speak the human language.”

The green monster sat down and grinned happily, showing needle-sharp teeth, while its friend rubbed its head on Fi’s neck.

“Fuff’s never been as clever as I am,” Fi added. “But I like having it as a friend.”

“I understand.” Sherlock nodded.

Anna turned around and saw that the detective had stood up again.

“I don’t know about you, Anna,” he said. “I for one am tired of the ghost dimension. How about we go home now? There are biscuits waiting.”

 

Anna was a little disappointed to leave now when she was just warming up to the monsters. At least Fi promised to visit her now and then.

“And if your parents ever try to make you eat salad, just put it under your bed,” it said and licked its lips. “I’ll eat it.”

\---

The sitting room of 221b was cosy and warm. On the sofa sat Anna with a blanket over her legs, sipping cocoa. Mrs Hudson was on the way down to her flat to take her fresh bread out of the oven. The scent of it was everywhere and made Sherlock think of Mary. In the kitchen, while waiting for the kettle to boil, he called John for his scheduled report.

“Sherlock! How are you? Everything alright?”

_They left the theatre twenty minutes ago,_ Sherlock deduced just from the sound of John’s voice. _Still enthusiastic over the performance—must’ve been very good. Now in the restaurant. He had a glass of wine already. Has been worrying about his daughter a little, but not so much that it spoiled the mood. Good._

In the background he could hear the other guests’ voices and Mary’s laughter.

“Yes, I’m fine—we’re fine. Everything’s fine,” Sherlock answered.

He hated talking on the phone. What was he expected to say? Some nice things about Anna probably.

“We’re in Baker Street with Mrs Hudson now. We all had some biscuits, didn’t we, Anna?”

He raised his voice a little. The girl blinked sleepily and gave him the thumbs-up.

“So you managed to get her away from the telly,” John acknowledged. “Great. How did you do that?”

“We investigated the case of the monster under Anna’s bed.”

“Oh! And were you successful?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Good.”

“You sound distracted,” Sherlock remarked teasingly. “What’s your wife doing to you this time?”

“Nothing at all,” John giggled.

Sherlock revised his estimate of John’s alcohol intake upwards. One and a half glasses at least.

“She’s just… under the table, she….”

“Shut up!” Mary’s distant voice interrupted him. “I only picked up my napkin.”

“I’ll give you the details later,” John promised.

“No!” That was Mary again. “You’re not telling Sherlock any _details_ about us.”

“You can talk,” John defended himself. “The last time I overheard Janine talking to you on the phone, I heard things I didn’t even know about myself.”

More fooling around, more laughing.

“Sorry, Sherlock. You still there?”

“Yes, I’m here. Mrs Hudson’s just coming back upstairs. With even more food, I suppose. Anna is half asleep already. She probably won’t brush her teeth tonight, sorry.”

“What did you do that made her so tired?”

“The case, John. I just told you. Basically Anna did all the brain work.”

“Right, of course. In a couple of years she’ll outdo you, I’m sure. Say hello to Mrs Hudson for me, will you?”

“Of course. Have a… an… um. A _nice_ evening.”

He was about to hang up.

“Sherlock?”

“Um, yes?”

“I know this probably sounds crazy, but… I wish you were here.”

 

Later, after Sherlock had been forced to try the bread (it was good), and they’d tucked Anna in on the sofa, Mrs Hudson wished them goodnight and left the flat. Sherlock switched most of the lights off and treated himself to a generous shot of brandy in his tea. By the fireplace with its fading glow, he sipped the drink slowly.

“You and your mummy and daddy,” he said in a low voice. “The three people I would do anything for.”

The rim of his teacup suddenly looked blurry, perhaps because of the brandy, or perhaps something had gotten in his eyes.

“You once asked me why we couldn’t all live together and be a family. I said that was impossible, but let me tell you a secret: I’ve thought about it, and actually, it’s a splendid idea.”

He sighed and finished his tea.

“Of course, I’m only telling you this because you’re already sleeping. You couldn’t keep a secret if your life depended on it. In that regard you’re just like your daddy. You would tell everything to Mrs Hudson, and Mrs Hudson would—.”

Anna stirred a little when he glanced over at her, adjusting the position of her head on the pillow.

“You _are_ sleeping, aren’t you?”  
  
  



End file.
